This paper describes a research and development project called the Tele-Manufacturing Facility (TMF). The TMF is creating an automated rapid prototyping (RP) capability on the Internet. It is undertaking the necessary research and development to make it viable for engineers and scientists to use over long distances. One portion of the effort is the connection itself and how to allow users to easily submit jobs and have the system automatically maintain a queue. Another effort is to reduce the need for human-checking of the RP .STL part files that are so notorious for containing geometric and topological flaws. By making RP hardware easy to access and the files easy to check and correct, we are then able to drive RP technology into less traditional areas such as scientific visualization.